I have always felt the urgency to work. My earliest memories date back to my early teens, when cutting lawns, bussing tables or selling concessions at Brewers games in County Stadium meant being able to buy just the right jeans or shoes or sports equipment I needed. Let’s call that the Urgency to Fit In.
I started college at UW-Madison on student loans and worked part-time in the state capitol for State Senator Lynn Adelman, who nobly served for many years in the legislature before becoming a federal judge. Halfway through my sophomore year my father died. Unable to concentrate in classes, I dropped out of school to work full-time, consider the goals I had previously set for myself — a life in politics — and then embarked instead on becoming a rabbi. Learning was work and work was work — I didn’t really distinguish between the two. I worked to pay for school; I worked to save money to study at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I was on a path. Let’s call this the Urgency of Becoming.
I think it’s fair to say that from ages thirty to sixty, work was like manning a ship amidst the relentless sea of life, navigating the mighty waters of growth and transformation; waging mighty battles and suffering bruising losses; knowing in the deepest wells of my soul the sublime, previously unimaginable highs and joys of creating a family and then facing the dark valley habitations of loss, dissolution and death. But always there is work, showing up, getting it done because it is simply what one does. This is the Urgency of Being. I’m certain.
While learning to fit in, to become and then to be, I always worked in one place. Had one job. Never the same job, mind you; I liked doing different things every five to ten years or so. It suited me. When I say I always worked in one place I mean this to be a geographic description: Wisconsin. And then New York.
But now, at sixty-one, I live in Maine and teach in Portland. But in the last several years I have also worked wherever I have been called: in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Jackson, Mississippi; in Minsk, Vilnius and Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In synagogues and JCCs; under the wedding canopy with bright-hearted beloveds and in the cemetery with mourners preparing to bury or remember their dead.
Like the famous Lone Ranger of serialized television fame, I generally like to do my work and quietly slip away, back to my books and my thoughts, hatching schemes to see my daughters, my sisters, my friends; hunting for recipes; checking the scores.
At sixty-one I run differently. No longer the young hunter, my stride is more deliberate. I’m all too aware of the state of my knees, calves and lower back. My neck aches. But I can’t not keep going. Step over step; patient inhales and more mindful exhales; maybe even just a measure more grateful than I once was for the breath of life which still comes with minimal effort. I’m one of the lucky ones.
“Rabbi Tarfon said, ‘The day is short; and the task is great; and the laborers are lazy; and the wages are abundant; and the Master of the house urges on.’” (Pirke Avot 2:15)
I know I’m not going to live forever but I want to keep going. And if the race is won by each of us who works, I’m on board. I have outlived my father but I am nowhere near the age of my most beloved mentors who chose to work virtually until the day they died. I relate to this. The more life, I figure, the more there is to share with others.
Pinhas Kehati says of Rabbi Tarfon that he was one of the greatest of the first generation of Sages and “was likened to a heap of nuts.” I knew I’d get your attention.
“Just as with a pile of nuts, when a man takes out one, all the rest topple over one another, so with Rabbi Tarfon; when a scholar approached him and said ‘Teach me,’ he would cite the Scriptures, Mishnah, Halakhah (Jewish law) and Aggadah (moral legends) so that the student would leave full of blessing and satisfaction.”
If not nuts then a Jenga tower. Each piece placed and then removed with reverence.
Oh Master of the Universe, if You insist that in this world our lives must rise and fall, must fall and rise, then grant us the privilege to learn and to work, to work and to learn.
This is the Urgency of Urgency.
Amen.
Okay, you convinced me - I'm never going to retire. Nonetheless, I'm always a little confused with citations to Rabbi Tarfon as a wise man. Isn't he the guy who insisted on stopping by the side of the road to pray after having been warned that there were robbers in the area? That may not have been an issue in the mid-west but as a native New Yorker I found it alarming.